All work and no play ...

Doing paid work for more than twenty hours a week could be bad for schoolchildren. A team of researchers led by Kathryn C. Monahan from the University of Washington studied 1,800 middle-class teenagers from Years 10 and 11. They found that working for more than 20 hours a week was associated with declines in school engagement and how far teenagers were expected to go in school and increases in problem behaviour such as stealing, carrying a weapon and using alcohol and illegal drugs. The study also found that things did not improve when the teenagers who were working more than 20 hours a week cut back their hours or stopped working altogether. By contrast working 20 hours or less a week had negligible academic, psychological or behavioural effects.